This research was inspired by my personal love of bees, and my curiosity on why their populations were declining. My theory was based on the knowledge I had on the issue, which was that pesticide use was the main cause of pollinator declines. The truth was much more complicated than that. This website will take you on a scrolling journey through my research, starting from the basic science of the issue, and building a bigger picture.
History: The first popular usage of pesticides was with DDT. DDT was an extremely dangerous chemical that was introduced as a magical solution to a variety of issues- including crops that were failing because of overwhelming pests. It was eventually banned because of extremely toxic long-term effects on humans and animals.
There is concern about more modern pesticides and their effects as well, as they seem to be problematic for bees and insects, and not everyone supports them being sprayed on food sources. Toxic effects of pesticides also have a tendency to build-up over the years.
Neonicotinoids: "neonics" are a commonly used type of pesticide. Tobacco plants naturally produce the substance nicotine which acts as a pesticide for the plant. Neonics are made as a synthetic form of nicotine, which can be used in a variety of ways, most importantly, as a pesticide for large-scale farming.
Pesticides such as neonics have been shown to have many detrimental effects on bees and other pollinators. They can have lethal or sub-lethal effects on the bees in terms of vitality overall but also can be damaging to their immune systems, reproductive capability, and other important processes necessary for survival.
Insects are struggling: there has been a noticeable difference in insect populations in the last few years. This is a concerning fact considering the role that these creatures play in pollination and maintaining a healthy environment. Studies have been done detecting issues with pesticides on insects, such as with solitary bees, which are bees that are not part of a hive. These extremely effective pollinators make up over 70% of bee species worldwide.
There has been a 41% decline in insects overall in the past decade. More specifically, pollinators have declined at..
- 46% in bees
- 53% in butterflies
- 49% in beetles
- 37% in dragonflies
- 25% in flies
The Four P's: There are four common issues that affect populations of bees and other pollinators negatively. These things are pesticides, poor nutrition, parasites, and pathogens. This will become very important later.
While honeybees are in decline, the comparative effect on other insects is more severe and made worse by honey bees. Honeybees are animals that have been utilized by humans, so their populations are often under human control. While the numbers of honeybees can be increased and mass-produced, the bees are not as resilient as they should be, leading to an effect called colony collapse disorder, or CCD. There is about a 40% decrease in bee populations annually. The reasons for this are often overlooked.
"Bee-washing" : a play on greenwashing ( a marketing tool that tries to convince the consumer that products are environmentally frinedly) which involves the use of honeybee products (honey, honeycomb, beeswax, propolis) to make and sell goods using the insect's decline as a marketing strategy. Products will be marked as being beneficial to the bees, convincing the buyer to think they are supporting a good cause. This is one of the ways that honeybees can be a highly useful tool for making a profit.
Why are honeybees so important?: Honeybees are responsible for pollinating nearly all of the food sources that contribute to global food security. This is often said as an important headline to spread awareness for bee declines in amounts and areas that people assume are occurring naturally. This is not the case.
In industrialized agriculture, pollination is essential for the maintenance of crops. Because fields are planted with one type of crop known as a "monocrop" system, it can cut off any other plants in the area. Honeybees are brought in truckloads by people called migratory beekeepers in order to pollinate these large plots of land because of their ability to pollinate many different crops, their large colony sizes, and their ability to be mass-produced and mobilized.
Industrial Agriculture is bad for honeybees:
Industrial agriculture wants maximum labor productivity and maximum yield
this means that the insects that they need to exploit also suffer the consequences. Industrialized farming and the mass-production of honeybees hurts them in four common ways. Remember the four P's?
Pesticides are applied to the crops and have been shown to have sub-lethal to lethal effects on the bees. Additionally they limit any other plant life and wildflowers in the area which eliminates alternative food sources for the bees. This contributes to poor nutrition, because the bees are only getting one type of food. They also are only exposed to food in large quantities during the blooming season followed by almost no food when it ends. The malnourished bees are also in large numbers and are brought in packed masses on trucks, which is conducive to the easy transmission of pathogens and parasites which also hurts the bees.
Industrial farming is the direct destruction of the natural ecosystem. While often necessary, it poses a threat to biodiversity. The mass production of honeybees causes other insects to suffer including a variety of pollinators and native bees. By removing honeybees from a natural context and breeding large amounts of them for industrial use, the natural balance of the environment is disrupted. The insects that are suffering in these changed conditions also have to deal with the effects of pesticides themselves. There are recommended EPA guidelines for a safer way to apply pesticides, which are more difficult to follow in large quantities. Pesticides should only be used when absolutely necessary for maintaining plant health. If pesticides need to be used, they should only be used on one plant at a time if possible and should be applied at night or before sunrise to avoid contact with foraging pollinators that are active during the daytime.
Why aren't people talking about this?: The industry that migratory beekeeping has created for honeybees is extensive and growing. Additionally, much of the research that is done for honeybees ignores other pollinators. Honeybees are a business.
The estimated market value for each insect is listed below:
- Honeybees- $20 Billion USD
- Native bees- $4 Billion USD
- The little midge- $6 Billion USD
Who are the stakeholders in this?:
- bees and pollinators, which are the most primary stakeholders because their survival is the center of the issue.
- beekeepers (migratory and otherwise), who rely on bees for their careers and livelihood
- pesticide companies, who could potentially lose business if they were limited for insect health
- farmers and agriculture as a business, which profit off of bees and pollinators, and rely on them to maintain their business
- plants/biodiversity, which are involved in the delicate ecosystems that are continually disrupted by fluctuations in bee populations outside of the norm
- humans as a whole, anyone who eats plant products (so hopefully most people and many animals) rely on pollinators to maintain the food sources that sustain their diets
What happens if the bees die?
If the bees die, there are many different things that will be effected leading to a variety of stakeholders in the issue. We rely on bees and pollinators to maintain most of our food sources, and the plants that keep our environment healthy. Industrial farming needs bees in order to function, even as the way that they use bees could be detrimental to their populations. Without bees, the foods and produce that we find in the grocery store would become very expensive and sparse. Over time there would be catastrophic environmental effects as pollinators are essential to the ecosystem.
The end. By Hannah Quinn.
Credits:
Created with images by umsiedlungen - "honey bee bee bees" • emersonbegnini - "poison spray agriculture" • jggrz - "pollination butterfly bud" • rostichep - "bee dead pesticide" • Daria-Yakovleva - "honey yellow beekeeper" • trueckauer - "honey bees colony beehive" • maxmann - "pesticide glyphosate plant protection" • QuinceCreative - "usd bills dollars" • Myriams-Fotos - "bee insect winged insect"